By - Nate "Lokust" Timperley (05/28/00)

On the Wings of a Dragon:

Imagine yourself soaring high above the ground, holding onto the wings of your two-headed dragon. Then as you and your mount circle around a floating citadel, you spot an enemy, riding upon a giant griffon-like bird. Spurring your fearsome lizard into action, you streak toward your foes and launch a fireball at one, sending it spiraling down to the ground far below.

Flying Heroes, brought to us by Pterodon, Illusion Softworks, and Take 2 Interactive, is the newest addition to the current crop of multiplayer action games. It takes the idea of deathmatch, made popular by Doom and Quake, and adds aerial combat to the mix. While the idea isn't a bad one, some major technical issues threaten to bring the game crashing back down to the ground.

A Series of Tournaments:

Flying Heroes is set in the violent land of Hesparia, a realm where a massive civil war, which spanned several decades, has recently ended. In an attempt to keep the peace amid the aggression of the populous, the emperor has created a series of tournaments and leagues known as the Air Battles. In these battles, the greatest warriors from each of the world's major clans meet to compete against one another for the Air Battle Championships in a series of brutal combat exhibitions.

Four major clans compete in the league, each with their own preferred mount, as well as their own styles of combat. The Lizard Riders take to the skies on slow, but powerful dragons, while the mysterious Magion are masters of magic and fly around in all manner of crazy contraptions. You'll initially see their mages flying around on magic carpets and in magic lamps, but later on you'll even find them using oversized teapots and winged barrels(!) as their vehicles of choice. Also involved in the tournaments are the Hammercraft, who pilot massive armored zeppelins, and the Sky Knights, who streak about on huge birds of prey.

Flying Heroes is a multiplayer game at its core, with most of the single-player game consisting of deathmatch-style gameplay against A.I. bots. Much like in Quake III Arena, it seems at times the story is only there to provide a reason to run around shooting people.

Nice Graphics, But At a Price:

The visuals in Flying Heroes are definitely a mixed bag. The game offers some nicely detailed graphics, but they come at a steep cost to your system resources. On my review system (Celeron 433, 256 MB RAM, GeForce DDR) the only resolution I was able to maintain a playable framerate at was in 640x480, and that was with the details turned down. When I tried 1024x768 (what I normally run most games at), the gameplay was reduced to a slideshow. Even when running at 640x480 the game would get very choppy when action was heavy, or if I turned around suddenly--certainly not acceptable performance by today's standards.

However, even if the graphics are slow at times, they certainly are decent enough to look at. The detail in the maps and on the player models is pretty impressive. Magic attacks and weapon effects are interesting as well. The game has the potential to have good graphics, if you could get it to run at a decent framerate.

Next: Sounds, Careers, and Battles...